Early returns: University of Missouri team gets a jump on melon season

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- The fruit tempted Robert Stevinson.

Sliced open in front of him like two halves of a lime-green sun, the melon called to the Fulton farmer. At last, Stevinson gave in to his desires, pulled out his pocketknife and cut into the green flesh.

Juice dripped from the blade as Stevinson raised the slice to his lips. "Yep, it's sweet," Stevinson slurped. "But it doesn't have the flavor I expected."

Still, a homegrown melon fresh off the vine in mid-June is something special in mid-Missouri. Usually melons grown in this part of the country aren't ready for harvest until July.

But crop specialists at the University of Missouri-Columbia have discovered that specialty melons -- such as the sweet-tasting Galia from Israel -- can be ready for market a full month earlier by using solar-heated greenhouses called "high tunnels" or "hoop houses."

"That can be pretty attractive to growers," said Lewis Jett, state vegetable crops specialist and an assistant professor in MU's horticulture department.

Last month, Jett and his assistant, Jim Quinn, invited area growers to see the advantages of growing crops in high tunnels at the MU Bradford Research and Extension Center, five miles east of Columbia.

About 25 people toured MU's eight arc-shaped tunnels where Jett and Quinn have been growing a variety of melons, including a single-serve watermelon that grows to be only about 6 pounds.

The tunnels, which stand between 9 and 15 feet tall, are covered in a clear plastic that holds in heat and protects the crop from harsh weather. Usually, the tunnels are used for growing tomatoes, but Jett wanted to find an alternative crop.

Jett discovered that specialty melons, especially the Galia melon, would be a logical rotational crop with tomatoes because the two plants share the same insects but not the same diseases.

The Galia also proved to be bountiful, producing about three to four 5-pound fruits per plant. Besides that, the Galia has a tough fruit stem, which improves the chances of a large harvest. At a price of $5 a melon, Jett said, a farmer could yield as much as $16 a plant. Not bad, especially considering that the average high tunnel has room for about 300 melon plants.

The stickler is that the best way to grow melons in a hoop house is to trellis them, which requires more labor than some growers are willing to expend. But trellising the plants keeps them off the ground and makes the blooms more accessible to bees for pollination. However, Jett admitted he had trouble attracting bees to the high tunnels and had to pollinate some of the plants by hand. Eventually, he purchased mini-hives and placed them in the remaining tunnels.

"The houses with bees have a lot more melons, about one more per plant," Jett said. "That's a lot of money."

Jett said that trellising and pollinating melons can be a lot of work, but he is convinced that once consumers taste the fruit, they'll turn into repeat customers.

"People will try them, taste them and be back for more," Jett said.

Paul Harter of Mexico, Mo., is excited about the possibilities for his high tunnels, which he purchased earlier this year. Right now, his plans are to grow tomatoes, but he came to hear what Jett had to say about growing melons.

"The thing about hoop houses is you can have market vegetables in May," Harter said. "And you're still growing in soil."